Kerry Says Syrian Regime Obstructed Peace Talks

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that while the Syrian opposition offered a road map to a transitional government, “we have seen a refusal to engage on the part of the regime.” Photographer: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
criticized the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad for
undermining peace efforts and targeting negotiation partners in
the Geneva talks that recessed without progress last week.

“None of us are surprised that the talks have been hard
and that we are at a difficult moment, but we should all agree
that the Assad regime’s obstruction has made progress even
tougher,” Kerry said in a Feb. 16 statement.

While the Syrian opposition offered a road map to a
transitional government, “we have seen a refusal to engage on
the part of the regime,” Kerry said.

“While it stalled in Geneva, the regime intensified its
barbaric assault on its civilian population with barrel bombs
and starvation,” he said. “It has even gone as far as to add
some of the opposition delegates at Geneva to a terrorist list
and seize their assets. This is reprehensible.”

The top U.S. diplomat’s statement was the strongest signal
from President Barack Obama’s administration that the peace
talks aimed at removing Assad from power may fail, even as the
White House continues to press for a diplomatic solution that
avoids U.S. military intervention.

Syrian government and opposition representatives ended a
second round of peace talks without agreeing on a date for the
next meeting, United Nations mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said Feb.
15.

‘I Apologize’

Negotiations ended after Assad’s regime refused to discuss
a transitional government with an opposition delegation, Brahimi
told reporters. The talks began on Jan. 24 under UN mediation.

“I apologize to the Syrian people that on these two
rounds, we haven’t helped them much,” Brahimi said.

Discussions in Geneva have stalled over an agenda to end
the three-year war that’s killed more than 130,000 people and
sent more than 2 million refugees fleeing to neighboring
countries. The government insists on tackling terrorism -- its
term for the opposition -- while the rebels want to focus on a
transitional government to replace Assad. Brahimi said Assad’s
envoys refused to discuss a transitional government.

Kerry said the international community must use the recess
in talks “to determine how best to use this time and its
resumption to find a political solution to this horrific civil
war.”

Obama has asked for a fresh review of U.S. options toward
Syria as peace talks have stalled and suffering intensifies,
Kerry said last week.

Chemical Weapons

The president last week said the U.S. isn’t moving closer
to taking military action, an option he withdrew in September in
exchange for an agreement engineered by Russia, an Assad ally,
for the regime to surrender its chemical weapons arsenal.

Kerry, in his statement, made a veiled reference to Russia,
saying supporters of the Syrian president’s regime should press
it to negotiate a peace deal.

“In the end, they will bear responsibility if the regime
continues with its intransigence in the talks and its brutal
tactics on the ground,” Kerry said of Assad backers.

Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Muallem, accused the
U.S. today of trying to create a “very negative climate for
dialogue in Geneva,” the Associated Press reported.

In addition to an escalating humanitarian disaster, a
prolonged civil war in Syria is rapidly becoming a proxy war
between Shiite Persian Iran and the Sunni Arab states of the
Persian Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, said a U.S.
intelligence official who follows the conflict.

Growing Pressure

The breakdown of the talks and the resulting continuation
of the fighting will add to the pressures of a growing refugee
population and may trigger Islamic militancy in neighboring
Jordan and Iraq. The breakdown may also encourage further
Kurdish independence movements in Turkey, Iraq and parts of
Syria and Iran, said the official, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because intelligence assessments are classified.

If it continues, the Syrian regime’s use of low-tech
“barrel bombs” to level Aleppo, the country’s largest city,
could force the U.S. and its allies to supply some rebel groups
with more advanced weapons, or even mount direct cruise-missile
attacks on Syrian military airfields and munitions facilities,
although that would be a last resort, the official said.

U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, a top Republican on
the Armed Services Committee, urged the Obama administration
yesterday to consider sending more arms to the Syrian
opposition.

‘Abysmal Failure’

Calling Obama’s Syria policy “an abysmal failure,” McCain
said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program, “There is still
viable opposition that we can help and assist.”

While Obama said on Feb. 11 that he reserves the right to
use military force, he also said, “Right now we don’t think
that there’s a military solution, per se, to the problem.”

Instead, the U.S. is supporting action at the UN Security
Council, where its Western and Arab allies circulated a draft
resolution on Feb. 11 demanding that civilians be allowed to
leave besieged areas. It also called on Syrian authorities to
allow humanitarian access across conflict lines and from
neighboring countries, particularly Turkey and Iraq.

A truce brokered by the UN in the city of Homs, the only
achievement of the peace talks so far, has allowed some aid
workers to deliver food and medicine to hundreds of civilians
trapped in the city, while evacuating others.

Valerie Amos, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, made
an appeal to the Security Council last week to do more to ease
the suffering, which has left more than 9.6 million Syrians in
need of urgent aid.